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Time to start de-Appling

heatherburns.tech

151–160 of 471 posts

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#151

Maybe it is better to de-tech a bit. Go back to some older decentralised stuff. Like buy cd's and blu-rays instead of digital/drm locked/streaming service shit. Be an owner again instead of a renter.

It's all fun and games until you learn that physical media has a limited shelf life.

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#152
post #151

Maybe it is better to de-tech a bit. Go back to some older decentralised stuff. Like buy cd's and blu-rays instead of digital/drm locked/streaming service shit. Be an owner again instead of a renter.

It's all fun and games until you learn that physical media has a limited shelf life.

so does digital..

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#153
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, a UK-only advice So what? > it strangely assumes that any other service in UK wouldn’t be bound by the same laws. From the linked article: > I’m not going to tell you where to move your stuff other than to say that if you’re moving it from one big tech company to another, you’re just being daft. Likewise, if you’re moving your stuff to a non-e2ee service, don’t bother. If you need an e2ee service try Proton. Th…

> So what? The title felt like there was a greater issue with Apple specifically. There wasn't. There was a greater issue with the new UK laws and cloud storage systems. I think people deserved a clarification before getting wound up about it before reading the article.

Yes, it's nothing to do with Apple per se - any major E2E provider would be under the same attack. The problem here is UK government is drunk with power and doesn't want their citizens to have any privacy rights, and UK citizens are largely ok with that, as evidenced by them keeping to elect such governments. Apple is just the most prominent target of the attack - eventually, they will try to attack smaller targets still, and make usage of the strong encryption as hard as possible, maybe outlaw it completely and mandate government key escrow. They already tried it in many countries, and UK seems to be very ripe to try again.

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#154
post #113

> Apple cannot disable ADP automatically for these users Extremely interesting.

ADP means that you own the encryption key to the data and Apple can’t access it, so Apple being able to turn ADP off by itself would invalidate the whole point of the system.

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#155
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual straightforward fix isn't available to us - namely, we aren't due a general election until 2029 and right now the "good guys" are in power, so it's not at all clear that anyone would even offer to reverse this TCN if they were elected instead, in 4 years time.

At least the US hasn't postponed the general elections to keep the unpopular party in power. https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/devolution-and-lgr-hub/...

Fact check - the UK hasn't postponed the general election.

Your link points to _some_ local council elections (the people responsible for bin collections, parks and care homes) and the extension has been requested by the local councils themselves.

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#156
post #30

Apple obeys the law. Policians set the law. You vote for politicians. So nu, it makes no sense to blame Apple here.

Unlike most writing about politics, the article isn't arguing that 'those are the bad people over there'. The article describes a current aspect of reality and how it came about, and suggests a way of responding to that reality.

The right way to respond to this reality would be to stop UK government from being insane by electing a more sane government. Stopping using iphones is going to help only for a short term - once encryption is de-legalized, they will come for everybody who they deem worth coming for, sooner or later. If it'll require introducing licenses to run encryption software and mandating key escrow, they'd do that. Yes, you still would be able to sneak in encrypting software on USB drive hidden in your... let's say, pocket. But the mere fact of using it would make you a criminal then. That's the natural progression of where it is going, unfortunately.

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#157
Taking inspiration from the East India Company, Apple should colonize the UK and take over the government - the iGovernment, if you will.

Citizens will regain their right to e2ee privacy, they will not have to deal with voting for mediocre politicians to lead them. Instead, Tim Cook will be their new leader, and every morning over the mandatory installation of HomePods in each home, citizens will be greeted with an ecstatic "Good morning!" to get them energized for the day ahead.

Voting will be done via iPhones, where FaceID will verify the eligibility of the voter before the vote has been submitted.

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#158
post #113

> Apple cannot disable ADP automatically for these users Extremely interesting.

ADP means that you own the encryption key to the data and Apple can’t access it, so Apple being able to turn ADP off by itself would invalidate the whole point of the system.

In theory, sure, but that theory surviving practice (e.g. a G20 government bearing against it) is meaningful. E.g. they could push an OS update to automatically turn off ADP for impacted users, but they aren't.

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#159
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

# Encrypt a file openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -salt -in secret.txt -out secret.enc # Decrypt openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in secret.enc -out secret.txt Wow that was hard.

You may think you're being sarcastic, but you are just stating a true fact here. For about 99.9% of this planet's population, it's not just hard, it's something they'd never ever know how to do and have no intention to ever learn. Like it or hate it, but that's what it is. And, for 99.9% of people who know how to do that, they'd still be too lazy to do it properly (hint: where do you keep secret.txt exactly? What hap…

> where do you keep secret.txt

Reminds me of using Ansible Vault and preciously encrypting every secret (so we can say that repos doesn't contain any secrets), then just putting ~/.vault_pass in plaintext on every Ansible controller to be taken by anyone with access to the servers.

Re: Time to start de-Appling

#160
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual straightforward fix isn't available to us - namely, we aren't due a general election until 2029 and right now the "good guys" are in power, so it's not at all clear that anyone would even offer to reverse this TCN if they were elected instead, in 4 years time.

At least the US hasn't postponed the general elections to keep the unpopular party in power. https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/devolution-and-lgr-hub/...

Neither has the UK government.

* It wasn't the general election.

* They offered local councils the chance to request it if they were going through a reorganisation or devolution process.

* 18 councils requested and 9 were accepted as justified.

* And even those are only delayed until May next year (one year after the rest of the UK).

So to be clear the UK government not only didn't postpone the general elections but half the councils who requested the local elections were postponed were denied, with the other half having reasons and still doing it a year later anyway.

And all that is actually covered in the page you link to.

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